The Thirteen Bends

by Shannon Reber

  I was worried, both about them and about the situation we were about to face. If Edith and Paul Mueller were trying to recreate the scene of their first killing spree, eleven more girls would be killed.

  “Okay,” Imogen said as she ended her call. “My cousin is going to help us. He’s pure fae and has serious earth magic. He’ll take care of Paul Mueller’s binding while I take care of Edith’s.”

  I sighed in relief, taking a turn much too fast. The fact the nun had told us death had returned made me sure we had to hurry.

  I wanted to talk to Ian, make sure that Detective Roche was far away but I couldn’t take my eyes off the road. I also had a really bad feeling. I didn’t know what was going on but I knew something had gone terribly wrong.

  TWENTY-TWO

  My breaths came out in short, shallow gasps as I dropped Imogen off at the thirteenth bend in the road. She looked like she was as freaked out as I was but there she was, ready to use her song to help us. It was an inspiring thing to see.

  I flashed my headlights in farewell and drove off fast toward the third bend. My mind was spinning. I had brought enough salt and agrimony to stop an army of ghosts but I didn’t know how those things would affect Detective Roche.

  It would hurt the ghost. I knew that. What I didn’t know was if the ghost would do damage to the body it possessed. There was a possibility that whatever happened to the ghost would do the same damage to the host.

  In all my research, I’d never found any information on that. I didn’t like Detective Roche at all but that didn’t mean I wanted to experiment on him to find out if one of the salt bombs would kill him as well. Even the idea of it made me feel sick.

  Holy water was the best option I had. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the spirits were pure evil. All things that were pure would do damage to them.

  And for the first time in years, I prayed. I didn’t know how long it would take for Imogen and Kelton to finish their work but all I had to do was stall them.

  My mouth fell open when I got to the third bend in the road. Ian’s car was there, along with another vehicle. It wasn’t Tria’s car.

  My mind raced its way through possibilities. What was Ian doing there? Could Tria have chosen to go there and Ian had followed to try and stop her?

  I pulled off to the side of the road and grabbed the bag from behind my seat, slinging the strap over my shoulder. Ian had a vial of salt in his pocket but his helm of awe had been taken by the cops. We needed to find a more permanent solution. Erkens had mentioned getting a tattoo but I hadn’t been sure. I was no longer unsure.

  I wished I had thought to grab one of the silver pens Erkens had used in the Cintamani case. It had been a serious oversight on my part. I was vulnerable and so was Ian.

  Quickly, I reached into the bag and took out a chunk of black onyx. Because I would need my hands, I put the stone under my tongue. It was uncomfortable but I didn’t care.

  I jumped out of my car and rushed over, my step faltering as Ian shifted around to face me. Behind him . . . was Tria. Her body had been impaled. The side of her head had been caved in. And she was naked.

  No. It couldn’t be. Tria was not the villain I had believed she was. She had been innocent . . . and she was dead in the same way as the girls in 1889. Edith must be there.

  I looked around, trying not to look at Tria. She was my sister’s friend. She was my client. And I had not saved her. Two clients killed in four days. It was horrible.

  I needed to focus on finding Edith’s ghost. I knew Paul’s ghost was inside Detective Roche. I didn’t know if it was possible for one body to hold two spirits. It was a creepy thought.

  I looked at the detective and my blood ran cold. His skin was covered in blisters. The parts of him that were unblemished were utterly colorless. Sweat covered his face and his suit jacket had been tossed aside. The shirt under it was wet with sweat.

  He turned to look at me and a slight smile came to his lips. “Welcome,” he said like a spider to an inattentive fly.

  I could tell that the only thing keeping Detective Roche’s body going was the ghost possessing his body. Since that was true, I had no qualm about using all the weapons at my disposal. Paul Mueller’s spirit needed to go back to the underworld.

  I took out one of the vials of salt and got ready for the attack. It baffled me why Ian would just be standing there. He had salt with him. He should have been using it.

  Erkens had taught both of us never to hesitate. We had seen a lot in the last few months and both of us knew that a moment of hesitation could get us killed. Tria. Gina. Kirby. Tanya. They were all dead and we were the only ones who were in a position to keep it from happening again. He had to step up.

  Detective Roche took a step closer to me, his creepy smile still in place. “This was my source of greatest pride. Of all my kills, this one lived with me longest. It was my beginning,” the ghost said through the man’s mouth. “It was such fun. My sister lured the girls outside, telling them she had a surprise for them. They were so afraid when they saw me but only one of them ran. The rest stood and whimpered while we had our fun with them.”

  I did not want to stand there and listen to a serial killer’s boasting but it was killing time. It allowed Imogen and Kelton to work their magic.

  Detective Roche’s body shuddered like the ghost inside him was experiencing a moment of ecstasy. “And when I was done, I ran to the town and told the villagers I had seen the nuns doing wicked things. It was such fun. The moment they saw the girls, the villagers turned on the nuns. They burned them alive in that school.”

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. But my trick of counting did nothing to calm my temper. I was so angry, my whole body trembled.

  I would not listen to more of that villain’s monologue. I would not take a chance on that monster getting further into the world. No more.

  I took one of the bottles of holy water out and squirted it right into the man’s face. Unlike the nun, the moment the holy water touched his skin, he screamed in pain. Some of it had gone into his mouth, so he spat as smoke billowed from him. Okay, that was good. He was distracted.

  I brought up the vial of salt and tossed it right in the possessed man’s face.

  A shriek of pain escaped the man’s mouth before his body convulsed and a darkness kind of seeped out of his skin. It was the ghost. It had been expelled from the detective’s body.

  I didn’t know where the ghost had gone. All I could do was hope that Imogen’s cousin had done his thing and bound the spirit to the body.

  I sank to my knees next to Detective Roche, tears filling my eyes. When I had done the research on Tillie Klimek, I had found out a lot about arsenic poisoning. The blisters on the man’s skin made it clear that’s what had happened to him. I didn’t know how the man had come into contact with arsenic but right then, it didn’t matter.

  His eyes fluttered open as he took in a wheezy breath. “He’s . . . gone,” he whispered, tears rising in his eyes. “I . . . he used my body to kill Gina Vaso and . . . a ghost. It was a ghost.”

  I nodded. “It was a ghost,” I agreed, taking out my phone to call for an ambulance. “Detective Roche, have you seen the ghost of a girl? Her name is Edith and so far as I’ve been able to tell, she was the brains of the operation. I have a feeling she’s not going to stop.”

  He gasped in a breath, his eyes fixed on something over my shoulder. “God help you,” he breathed before the last of his life drained from his body.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I stepped away from Detective Roche’s body, walking slowly toward Tria’s. It was terrible to see the suffering she must have endured but something told me there was a clue around her. It was like a force pushed me toward the dead body of the woman who had hired me to help her make amends for the things she had done.

  Her son had been used as a bargaining chip to keep her from questioning the orders given to her. And now, she was dead.

  I looked at the wound in the side
of her head, doing my best to ignore the coppery scent of her blood. I had looked at crime scene photos many times, so to make it a little less horrible, I imagined it as photos. The first thing my mind took a picture of was that horrible wound.

  The side of her head was caved in, brain matter and gore all over the side of her face. Bile rose in my throat but I fought it back. I had to figure out what I had missed.

  And slowly, the marks on her neck registered in my mind. Hand shaped bruises. It had happened before she died. What else had that beast done to her?

  I took out my phone to call the cops, surprised when Ian stepped over and took my phone from my hand. I glanced at him and my blood ran cold. His eyes were fixed on the wound on Tria’s head. He was smiling.

  It couldn’t be. That could not be it. It had to be a mistake.

  Tears rose in my eyes. Ian. It could kill him but even if he survived, what would it do to him?

  The sky had darkened to a level it was hard to see much but I took the chunk of amber from my pocket and raised it. The stone inside the amber was pure black. Dear God in heaven. Ian was possessed by Edith Mueller.

  He turned his head and smirked at me, smashing my phone into a thousand pieces in his hand. The strength of the creature inside him was phenomenal.

  It was heinous to see Ian’s beautiful face turned up in the kind of cold-hearted smile the spirit put on his face. That was not Ian Gregory. I had to remember that. It was Edith Mueller, a child who had been some kind of sociopath.

  The fact the nun had described her as well-liked and pretty told that tale all the more clearly. It was a classic sign of an antisocial personality disorder. A lack of empathy. A lack of remorse. A manipulator. She really had been the brains of their evil operation but Paul had chosen to kill her at the end of their first slaughter.

  I didn’t understand why Edith’s spirit had been called back. The way Tria had described it, Edith had told her that death had come. What did that mean?

  Ian’s smile grew even colder, even less like him than he had been before. “My brother was a fool,” the ghost said through Ian, shaking his head as I reached for the bag. “Ian knows what you have in that bag of yours. I see his mind.” And faster than I would have thought possible, the bag was torn from my shoulder and flung away.

  I could vaguely hear the tune Imogen played. I wasn’t sure how long it would take her to bind Edith’s spirit to her grave. I prayed even harder. Ian was everything to me and that ghost . . . she could kill him in a finger snap.

  It looked like killing was her favorite pastime. I had to get that thing out of him. He was a good man. That had to be enough.

  What I’d read about a vengeful spirit possessing people, was that the purer the soul, the harder it was for the ghost to cling to it. I knew Ian was a good man. He might not be precisely pure but he was pretty close.

  “Paul never understood that he was nothing more than a scapegoat,” Edith informed me, stalking Ian’s body closer to me. “I planned for him to give me a glancing blow, then I could tell the world how he had committed those atrocities. But he hit me too hard. He stood over me for a long while before the fool decided to lay the blame on the nuns. The old biddies.”

  It was appalling to hear Ian’s voice saying those kinds of things but if I could keep Edith talking, it might give Imogen the time she needed. “Was there a reason you picked the twelve girls?” I asked, trying to sound interested rather than like I wanted to run away and hide.

  “Do you believe I am stupid enough to stand about chatting?” Edith demanded and before I could do anything to defend myself, she had drawn her arm back to slap me.

  My head snapped to the side. My cheek stung and my ears rang but it was the pain of the fact she had used Ian’s body to do it that really tore at me.

  I wasn’t weak or helpless. The trouble was, Ian wasn’t the one moving his body. And his body was all that would be hurt if I struck back.

  My eyes fell on the bag of supplies I had brought. Maybe if I could get to them, I could use one of the salt and iron grenades. Maybe I could throw it high enough into the air that when it exploded, the salt and iron would rain down on that revenant.

  No. That was stupid. The casing of the grenade would create shrapnel that could do serious damage. I would not do anything that could hurt Ian.

  The problem was, Edith enjoyed causing pain. My left eye had begun to swell from the power of that strike. If she hit me too many times, I wouldn’t make it.

  Ian was tall and strong on his own. With a vengeful spirit inside him, he was a formidable adversary. Thinking of him that way made me feel sick but I had no other choice.

  Edith struck me across the face, hard enough that I fell back. My back hit the ground hard and my head swam but the stone I had put under my tongue slid up between my teeth.

  A stone of purity. A dark spirit was inside Ian. The stone would help to purify him. All I had to do was get it inside him.

  My mouth had begun to swell so much, it was hard to open it. I had very little time, so I spit the stone into my hand and tried to get to my feet.

  Edith was on me before I could even get my bearings.

  She took hold of my arms and lifted me into the air, throwing me to the ground. Fire exploded in my shoulder as I hit the ground and a pop sounded out. My shoulder was out of joint. The impact mixed with the pain made me black out for a few seconds.

  When I came back to myself, I saw bold, Caribbean blue eyes. They were so beautiful. A golden boy. A good man.

  “Ian,” I whispered, love for him filling my heart and mind.

  He gave me a weird look before his face broke into a smile that chilled my blood. “He loves you, you know,” Ian said and rested his hand on my stomach. “So much love,” and he pressed down on my ribs.

  Agony. My ribs snapped. The fire of pain through my shoulder was nothing in comparison to the fire shooting through my ribs. Every breath was torture.

  But my mind cleared. That was not Ian. It was Edith Mueller. Imogen was working on binding her spirit to her body. I had to make sure no one else was hurt because of that spirit.

  I had no idea if Ian could survive. I had no idea if I would survive. I had to do this and keep that spirit from killing anyone else.

  I shifted, trying to get in a better position. The pain didn’t matter. The important thing was to stop that creature.

  With a surge of adrenaline, I brought my hand up and tried to shove the stone in Ian’s mouth. Edith made him move his head at the last moment but the stone grazed his skin, leaving a burn across his cheek. Terror engulfed me. It burned Ian. No. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t hurt him.

  Fire appeared all around us. Screams of pain filled the air. And the nun’s ghost flickered into view.

  “The light of God surrounds us. The love of God enfolds us. The power of God protects us. The presence of God watches over us. Wherever we are, God is. And where God is, all is well,” she prayed and all of a sudden, strength filled me.

  I had a job to do. Edith Mueller had to be stopped no matter what. Ian would want me to put aside my emotions and do my job.

  “I love you, Ian,” I said and with a scream of pain, I sat up and shoved that stone into his mouth.

  Smoke billowed from his mouth and his eyes bugged. His skin turned red. Sweat slicked his brow. And a darkness seeped from his skin.

  Like black smoke had been trapped inside him, it came from his nose, his mouth, his ears, even his eyes.

  That darkness cringed back from the figure of the nun. It moved toward me instead until slowly like a moth to a flame, it was drawn downward.

  And finally, I understood. The spirit had to be out of the body it possessed before it could be bound to its true body. Imogen had done it. She had saved us.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Tria Hewitt had spent her life communicating with the dead. She had felt closer to the dead than she had ever felt to the living. She was surprised by how clear things were to her now that she was among the
dead.

  Tria felt sadness wash over her as she saw Madison try to help Ian. Madison was badly hurt but she didn’t even seem to notice.

  “Am . . . I dead?”

  Tria turned to find Ian standing next to her, his eyes fixed on Madison as well. She considered him for a few seconds, not sure if he was dead or just so badly injured that his soul hadn’t been able to remain in his body.

  She watched as Madison took an IV kit from her bag and began fumbling to get it started, her shoulders shaking with sobs. “I’m not sure, Ian. I think it will all depend on how quickly they can get your body to the hospital.”

  “So this is an out of body experience?” he asked, his voice hard.

  “That’s exactly what it is.”

  He stood still for a few long moments before he turned away. “I could see what that demon was doing but I couldn’t stop her. She helped to kill you using my body. She hurt Maddie using my body.” His voice broke and tears began to stream down his cheeks. “I have been in love with Maddie for years but I never had the balls to tell her. I was too afraid she still just saw me as Emma’s big brother. I know that’s not how she sees me but I was too big a coward to say the words.”

  Tria blinked, surprised to find that she was now in front of Ian. Her spirit had wanted to be there, so it had taken her there. It was an amazing feeling.

  She tipped her head to the side, waiting until he looked her in the eye before she spoke. “Ian, death is not the end. As you can see.” She held her hands out to her sides to show him the fact she was directly in front of him. “Love doesn’t die either. It lives on. I knew you two for a few hours and it was obvious to me that you were both in love. Madison knows. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  He blinked, slowly turning his head to look at the tableau happening in the living world. “My hands hurt her. Look at her. Her shoulder is dislocated. Her ribs are smashed. Her jaw is broken. And it’s like she hasn’t even noticed.”